The Dalai Lama answers “Nothing”. I love it.

Personally, I dread this question.

First of all, because there is no all-encompassing answer. What I do almost depends on what day of the week it is.

Second, the complexity of the answer also depends on who is asking it. If you are my hairdresser, the chances are you don’t really want to hear that yesterday I “helped a client recognize and act on synergies between his offline and online marketing efforts, and thus facilitated a deployment of a new project to harness the value of his market-community”.

Thirdly, because I am involved in such diverse projects, the conversation often turns awkward. If I tell someone I am in “the Internet business” and he says he is an artist, is it then necessary for me to mention that I am also hugely involved in some of the best art galleries in Pretoria?

My business card says I am an Idea Facilitator. Take that at face value, I always say. People either look confused or actually thrilled at the concept. The latter group is the one I really like ☺

The truth is, that I cannot envision myself being pigeon-holed into a limiting job description. I am, of course, lucky in that I work for myself , and thus do not really answer to a boss. I am free to be grabbed by projects that I find inspiring, challenging or simply fun.

But the best part of all this is that most people that I meet through the blogosphere and Internet in general, even if they have a specific title in the job, are not really tightly bound to specific functions. I know a copywriter who is also getting involved in community building via her company’s website. I know a web application designer who is a powerful voice in promoting the open source movement. I know a venture capitalist who opened up a chain of fashion stores on the side. We are now more free to do what drives us, which means we are more likely to be living our “optimal life”.

Theo Aspeling recently pointed me to a though-provoking article on “Being Yourself For a Living”, by Robin Wheeler. The crunch of it is that any career should be premised on three cornerstones:

1. You must do what you enjoy
2. You must make a contribution to the world
3. You must generate money

Wheeler says that if any of these three are missing, you’re not going to be fulfilled. On the other hand, if all three are present, you are living an optimal life. He goes on to offer suggestions on how to implement “being yourself” in your life, your organization and your community.

If you are reading this blog, then I venture to say that you also struggle to define what it is that you actually do (although the answer in inherently known to you).

So tell us – what DO you do? And don’t worry – we’ll understand, even if your hairdresser won’t.

I received this in my email box recently. Stinks of some sort of scam, but I cannot prove it. Some warning signs are:

1. Even if I wanted to help out, South Africa isn’t on the PayPal list either
2. The email from which this was sent is not the email to which they want you to reply
3. And the contact page of the company has been hacked!

Good day!

I m Cathryn Sneed from BelsysGroup, located in Republic of Belarus, Minsk.

Over the 10 years Belsys specializes in truck transportations across the countries of Western and Eastern Europe, Russia, and CIS through its owned and operated truck transportation units. Since 1993 the company is the member of the National Association of International Road Carriers.

We have a lot of payments every day and some clients want to pay via Paypal for our services.

We visited Paypal site and didn’t find Belarus in country list of registration form!

You can check it here: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_registration-run

This way we can’t work with Paypal directly and need to recruit exterior co-workers.

BelsysGroup is pleased to offer you a position of Paypal Manager in our company. It’s a part-time job and we need fast reliable partner, who can help to solve this little problem with Paypal payments. You can do this job without leaving your main job. There are no any fees involved!

REQUIREMENTS:

+ Only English speaking employees!
+ Premier or Business PayPal account!
+ Ability to be on the connection during the working day (phone, email)!
+ Ability to make operations so fast, as we require!
+ Precisely follow all our instructions!
+ Western Union, Moneygram office in your city and must have little experience of work with this systems and Wire Transfers system also.
+ Possibility to visit a bank or cashing location any day of the week if needed.

More priority to candidates who have a Paypal CARD with high withdrawal limit!

SALARY

The Employee will be paid on a Commission basis, daily on the day when working operations be carried out, into Paypal or bank account nominated by the Employee. We’ll pay 5% from total value of every transactions. All additional charges (like WU, MG and other comission payments) will be paid by the Employer. You can earn up to 2000 EUR per month.

If you are interested in this offer, please, contact me for more information.
Please, send your offers and questions to e-mail: ****@gmail.com

With best regards,

Cathryn Sneed
http://www.transgroup.by

I don’t usually use an ATM to draw cash, but I had reason to do so this past Friday, and as a result, I was shell shocked.

There was one ATM, and there was a man using it ahead of me. I waited patiently for him to finish his transaction, but he simply took forever. I was getting frustrated and annoyed. I could see the red screen of “SORRY …” on the ATM machine, and concluded that the man was clueless as to how to use it.

Eventually, he turned around and asked for my help. He was a black labourer, still dressed in his blue overalls and was visibly distressed. The machine would not give him any money. After deciding that it was safe to help (how sad to even have to think about this) I put in his card, he entered his password and we proceed to try an withdraw R140. As it turned out, he only had R120 available, with an additional R50 in ‘reserve’ that the bank does not make available for withdrawal.

As a result, he was getting INSUFFICENT FUNDS error. Fair enough. BUT but but !!!!
HE WAS BEING CHARGED FOR EACH TIME THIS HAPPENED!!!!!!!!

Now, to someone who has R120 in the bank, the R2 or R3 charge is A LOT. And to someone who is incurring the charge because he doesn’t understand why he cannot access all HIS money, it seems decidedly unfair. He was devastated, and I was devastated for him. I helped him withdraw his R120, gave him the missing R20 from my wallet, and he went on his way.

But I’ve been bothered by this incident all week-end. How can the working class be encouraged to save if the banks are such bastards? I employ about 10 black workers in one of my businesses, and I have long encouraged them to allow me direct deposits into their bank accounts. They balk, and now I understand why. So the result is that they get cash each week, and it is obviously difficult (impossible?) to save.

The banks should be held accountable for this. It is not just a “good feel” factor at stake, but the financial future and potential of this country. I think it is hugely serious, it affects all sorts of other things (education, or lack thereof if there are no saved funds, etc).

And actually, it does not just affect the working class of course. Adii posted recently about his bank not giving him full access to his OWN money, unless he was willing to incur a R48 fee. And only because he is a student, with a student account. GIVE ME A BREAK!!!! SURELY a bank should be smart enough to recognize that if there is a student who has considerably more money (of his own) than the average student, that he should be treated extra well, instead of being charged for his success.

How are we going to put a stop to this tyranny? (I miss 20twenty.)

I often get asked to listen to pitches for new web companies, mostly with the idea of offering advice, suggestions or helping someone take a project to the next level. I am always eager to participate in these sessions, because it gives me a good idea of how people perceive the opportunities that the web presents, and it also often highlights the many misconceptions that people have of marketing in this space (If only 1% of all online people pay us $5, we’ll be very successful, and will offer ourselves to Google ….., you get the idea).

So I was THRILLED to be given the opportunity to hear the concept of a new local start up that has HUGE global potential. I cannot say anything about the company itself (yet), but I can already see that if the cards are played right here, we have the next “obvious” application, that will appear on web pages all over the world, coming right out of our shores. That is great news. But it is not often that local companies can easily go global, which is why when the founders of this particular start up launch, I wish them the best of luck.

Which got me thinking – how exactly do you go global? In South Africa, which really does have a small online community, if you only slightly network, you are no more than two degrees of separation from those who can propel you forward if they believe in your product. It is more difficult to launch big, quickly and cheaply if the whole world is your intended audience.

I suppose you can attend the many overseas trade shows and seminars to spread the word, but that is hardly cheap or quick. You can open yourself to outside funding, but that might be a bit premature and a bad early move. Your best bet is to depend on the very community that you can attract (local) to be networked enough globally to spread the word. And that can happen. Or you resign yourself that your launch will need to sacrifice at least one of the three “big, cheap and quick” requirements, and you come up with a very, very good hook – which, by the way, this particular company seems to have done.

The good news is that the company is soft launching in South Africa, and soon, so keep your eyes peeled. Or subscribe to this blog, where I will of course keep you updated!

Business Week feature an excellent chart that neatly sums up the state of the web wrt to the US audience.

They divide the web audience into six categories:

• Creators publish web pages, write blogs, upload videos
• Critics comment on blogs and post ratings and reviews
• Collectors use RSS to gather information
• Joiners use social networking sites
• Spectators read blogs, watch videos, listen podcasts
• Inactives are online but don’t participate in any social media

The audience is also divided into 7 age groups:

• 12 – 17 yrs
• 18 – 21
• 22 -26
• 27 -40
• 41-50
• 51-61
• 62 +

The chart then shows you what percentage of users fall into each category and each age group. For example:

34% of 12-17 yr olds in the US, who are online, are creators. 51% of them are Joiners and 34% are Inactives (obviously, these categories are not mutually exclusive, so you can belong to more than one)

On the other hand,

only 5% of the 62 yr+ age group are Creatives, and 70% of them are Inactives.

Gives you a good understanding of who is where doing what.

Yahoo has tried to buy Facebook for an initial price of $750 million, and supposedly took the offer all the way up to $1.6 billion before the end of the talks. According to Executive Summary, which uses a leaked slide of Yahoo’s evaluation techniques and projects them for current figures, Facebook is now worth about $3.5 billion.

Numbers, numbers, numbers. Anyone with a calculator can plug them in and come up with arguments as to why FB is worth $10m, $50m, $1 billion or whatever.

The truth is, number analyses don’t work. Here’s an example of why:

Number of FB users at time of Yahoo offering: 7 million
Amount Yahoo was willing to pay: $750 million - $1.6 billion
Cost per FB user: $100 - $235

At the time, FB was a college community tool. And, as anyone who was once a poor student knows, students respond to money. So if the value of FB can be found in numbers, build a better tool (ain’t rocket science) and offer each student $150 to join. Hell, I’ll join too! And you ! And you!

But, of course, there is more to it than that. What you are really buying, if you are buying FB, is a mind set. There are, today, 30 million people who like FaceBook. And it isn’t even perfect. But our mind is set on logging in everyday, because our friends are logging in too.
And we love our friends.
More than we love Google.

But where is the money?
Facebook is a great start for a money making making tool, but it is not the tool itself. What Facebook has done, is it has created an audience. Not, mind you, an ad-receptive audience. Just an audience, made up of millions of people, who like to communicate with each other in an environment that they can very much control. But don’t try to send them a message to buy anything. Right now, there is no advantage to the audience to receiving that message.

Unless, of course, the audience is also making money out of it.

This is pretty much how Google’s Adsense works. Google haven’t bought Joe Doe’s website, but they have convinced him that if he puts ads on it, he can make money. Joe gives a licence of sorts to Google, to display ads on his site. Slyly, but logically, Google explain to Joe that it is still his effort that is necessary to make the money - by maintaining the website, posting good content, and pushing it out to the community.

But wait! The community in Facebook is already built in. So all we need now is for someone to convince Joe Doe that he should put ads on his Facebook page by incentivising him with cash. Of course, it is a bit awkward to sell things to friends, so it will have to be a very subtle process. Maybe Joe will recommend a book to Jane, and make money if Jane buys it. Or he’ll suggest we all go to a concert together, and make a commission on the tickets. Or we’ll all subscribe to a service that adds benefits to our online experience. Maybe if Joe sends a Facebook message to Jane that they should see a movie this Friday, a one line note can be appended that suggests which movie is going to be the hot ticket this weekend.

The options of monitization are endless, but they would have to be dealt with a lot of sensitivity. This, after all, was our community first, and it was founded on some self-evident rights. The main of these is that nobody is making money off us, without our permission.

So how much is Facebook worth?
Spreadsheets won’t tell you, because Facebook is worth what anyone will pay for it. Or what Mark wants for it.

Perhaps an alternative method to valuing Facebook is to work out how much time is spent Facebooking relative to time spent being exposed to other online marketing methods, and how fixed that ratio is. And trust me, as soon as Facebook is sold, there will be plenty of “Where’s the next Facebook ?” questions posted out there - immediately.

By licensing out Facebook, the buyer and seller get a win-win situation. The “seller” continues to develop a product that gets as much online attention span as is possible form the audience. The “buyer” takes advantage of this attention span in a sensitive, incentivised, and brilliant way. Either one messes up, and it’s back to the market.

But if they both succeed, they will perfect the ideal marketing model of the most powerful marketing machine in the world- the online community.

And we know who “they” are. Don’t we?

I’ve always been on the lookout for the perfect start page.  I wanted something with links to everything that I do online, plus some extras like various feeds, news, my email, etc.  I tried iGoogle, but it didn’t really work for me, so eventually I settled on the simple Google search page as my home page, and then played around with the bookmark feature inFirefox that allows me to open various websites in tabs, with one click.

Until someone (sorry, can’t remember who) suggested I try Pageflakes.  It works like  dream, loads superfast, and gives me everything I want on one page, first thing in the morning!

It is a breeze to set up, easy to customize and works for me!

One of my favourite magazines, Business 2.0 is running a fascinating story on domain moguls. I have always known that there is money to be made in domain purchase and reselling, but the article blows my mind.

So how do domains make you money? Three ways:
1. They point to a revenue generating, legitimate website
2. They point to a web page filled with Adsense ads from Google (or other ad network). Every time anyone clicks on the ad, you make money
3. You can sell them on to someone who wants them for 1. or 2. above

So how much money is made? A lot.

Kevin Ham is the guy who is profiled in the Business 2.0 article., He trained as a doctor, but quickly figured out where the real money is. He owns 300 000 domains, and makes about $70 million a year.

Him and Cameroon. Cameroon? Yep. It turns out that the country extension for domains for Cameroon is .cm, which just happens to be a common typo for those of us who want to type .com. And now, thanks to Ham, if you type almost anything dot cm, you get taken to an ad page. Kaching, as they say. He shares his profits with Cameroon.

The article outlines his whole story and method – it’s a good read.

And you will be amazed at how much some domains actually cost. I bought this one (of relevance.com) for about $9, But Ham paid $171,250 for hoteldeals.com and $350,000 for greeting.com. Nice.

Personally, I think the days of making money from ad pages is pretty numbered. The trick for these domain owners is to get the “fake” page to feature high on search engine results by fooling the search engines into thinking that the page is full of relevant info. But Google is smart, of course, and is already knocking a lot of them off the front page. As the technology and algorithms improve and suss out the fake pages, the domain owners will have to rely more and more on actual typos to get people to visit their pages.

As a follow-up to my post on South Africa’s Top Bloggers, as ranked by Technorati, I whipped out my calculator, and did some number crunching.

There are approximately 16 million blogs tracked by Technorati.

I’ve been told that there are about 30 000 active blogs in South Africa.

That means we represent about 0.002 % of all blogs.

As I pointed out in my post, we also represent only 0.00045% of the Top 100,000 ranked posts on Technorati.

That means that we should have FIVE times as many Top 100,000 blogs as we do right now.

Of course:

1. I probably have not got a full list of our Top Blogs. (Help me update it by leaving a comment below if you know of a blog that is in the 100 000 rank on Technorati)

2. The audience ie. blog readers is also skewed away from South Africa, and if the theory that there are more people who read blog than people who blog, this would also affect South Africa.

But still.

Any comments?

Eric Edelstein is hosting the next OpenCoffee in Cape Town tomorrow, at 6pm at the Extreme Hotel.
He has changed the format slightly, and there will now be a 10 minute presentation by Henk Kleynhans from Skyrove.

Eric has done a great job getting the ball rolling for OpenCoffee in Cape Town, and the meet up between investors, and web entrepreneurs has already gotten some sweet results. If you are a player in the web world, and if you are hoping to make money of it (even if only one day!), or are looking to meet fellow colleagues in the space, go on over and sign up.

Eric has also set up a Facebook group for OpenCoffee, if you are interested. There are over 250 members, so you are bound to be in good company!

For those of you in Jo’burg who are interested in attending our next OpenCoffee, please sign up here.